No two displays alike; each one a superb specimen of whatever type it represented. It reminded her of the oldest, now disused, Paxian court chambers, filled with the tribute of centuries of Empire, assembled in an effort to say, Look at me, I matter the most.

And in the middle of it all, sitting on a rocky mass that resembled a throne, was Tubal Last. Near him stood Lolola, looking nervous, gaze wandering between the arrivals and the pirate chieftain.

He was a gray man. Humanoid in appearance. But gray as though all the color had been leached out of him, stolen away without his knowing. His eyes were dull lead and rainy skies set in ash-colored skin, and the thin strands of his hair that webbed his scalp were colorless and sparse. Golden luck symbols crawled over his rich red robe, but he was so gray that it seemed as though the fabric grew paler from proximity, that his skin faded it with his touch.

His age was indeterminate. He could have been twenty or twenty decades; the fine grain of his skin spoke of vat care, but it could have emerged yesterday or been replenished hundreds of times since that first emergence. In flesh he was neither thin nor fat, but he held himself with muscular strength.

He watched in silence as the prisoners, under Turo’s direction, were guided to stand in a rough line before him, some twenty feet away, and forced to their knees.

His eyes swept up and down the line several times, judging them. Between Niko and Dabry, Atlanta forced herself to meet his look, but his expression did not change at her boldness. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it was not to be dismissed like this.

She thought of Niko’s words, better to be small and meek, and decided that this time she would listen.

They knelt in silence in the vast room, but it was far from quiet there. A cat purred; birds quarreled. Something in the far reaches of the room yowled and was answered by the hooting of something else.

Tubal Last spoke directly to Niko. “You haven’t changed much.”

“I have aged and grown a good bit wiser.”

“Wise enough to catch a split lip on the way to see me?”

“Sadly,” she said. “But I never claimed that my tongue did not still escape me, from time to time.”

Their voices were deceptively easy. Atlanta would have thought them figures in some court play, about to launch into a satiric account of the latest gossip. But something in the deepest reaches of their words chilled her, made the nerves on her arms clench as though someone were dancing their fingers up and down the inner skin. She heard Skidoo’s harsh gulp for breath as Last continued.

He turned to Lolola. “You have brought me my enemy,” he said.